Meanwhile, On The Other Side Of The World...

Things are moving. My personal Air Canada flight attendant has left home to meet me in London tomorrow morning. Up to the last moment we tweeted about it, and when she left her house she was still worried about her front door. I hope everything has been fixed now. That woman, Sue, is a whirlwind. I wonder if she even sits down for lunch or has that on the run, too.

My first ever book reading will be at her house, on the 29th. I'm nervous about it, it's a totally new experience, and I've been reading out loud for days now so that I won't sound like a total idiot, but my tongue still feels like a dead slug when it tries to wrap around the seldom spoken English language. Funny how one can write fluently in one language, but when it comes to speaking it everything is different.

So anyway. Last minute crapola.

Last minute crapola is when you give your publisher the wrong address for the FedEx package with your pre-launch reading booklets. Trust me, it makes you look dumber than dumb and blonder than Madonna. It makes you want to crawl under the carpet and hide there for the rest of your life. Thankfully, they value me for my narrative skills and not for being a great manager. Crisis over, booklets on their way to the right house.

Something good came from this though. The publisher asked, just for good measure, for the phone numbers of the other recipients, and when Bunny gave me hers I could not resist. I TALKED TO THE BUNNEH! The first time ever!

Ok, now that I'm writing this, I can see you raise your eyebrows and go, "What? You've been friends for TWO years and you never talked on the phone before?" Yes, well, that's just how it was. Now we have, though, and I can tell you, she has a voice like sweet molasses. That Southern drawl is just too good for words.

So while Bunny and I were chatting, Sue left her house for the airport.



She tweeted this. I have to say, it looks pretty much like here, weather-wise.

Oh, I have to explain this. Sue NEVER flies the London route. She's a Pacific girl through and through. Today she is doing this just to pick me up. It was her bribe for me to go to Vancouver, which was not on my trip plan at all. AFTER I had bought my tickets she grumbled a bit about London, and how she would pull out every single hair from the top of my head if she caught bed bugs in the hotel there.

Last night she looked quite relaxed though.  She tweeted a couple of pics of herself and the rest of the crew, but I'm not sure I should upload them here without their consent. So you'll just have to imagine a group of pretty Air Canada flight attendants in very smart, dark blue outfits.

Tomorrow, pretty much at this time of day, I'll be sitting down in that plane, in London.

And now I'm off because I need to do some packing. See you on the other side!